Minimum sensitivity active (leapfrog) and passive ladder bandpass filters

It is shown that the sensitivities of resistively terminated ladder networks can be significantly reduced by inserting losses into the internal sections of the overall structure. Sensitivity improvements on the order of 20 percent are obtained for many of the filters considered. This observation is particularly useful in active ladder (leapfrog) synthesis where the additional losses are readily compensated, if necessary, by the gains of the active elements. To achieve optimum overall sensitivity, a previously introduced statistical multiparameter sensitivity measure is minimized.